(The following was originally posted on the Socialist Alternative Party’s website.)
Across the country low-wage workers are rising up, protesting, and striking for a $15/hour minimum wage.
In Seattle the movement is poised in 2014 to be the first major U.S. city to win $15. Voters in SeaTac, a small city outside Seattle, recently passed a ballot initiative for $15. A leader in the Fight for $15 in Seattle, Kshama Sawant, shocked the corporate elite by winning a City Council seat in Seattle as a Socialist Alternative candidate. Newly elected Mayor Ed Murray has also declared his support for $15.
But big business will not let this pass without a fight. They will mobilize their resources to derail, delay, and dilute efforts to end the poverty wages that are the source of their profits.
The only way we can counter the power of Corporate America is by building a massive grassroots campaign with local neighborhood and campus groups, town hall meetings, mass rallies, and strikes.
Seattle Councilmember Kshama Sawant, along with a growing list of workers, unions, and activists, have come together to form 15 Now to organize this movement.
15 Now is currently centered in Seattle – where the Fight for 15 has the best immediate prospects – but we aim to build a nationwide movement. A victory in Seattle in 2014 would open the floodgates for working people to demand $15 in cities across the country. But it will not happen automatically.
We need you to get involved. Please sign up here to join this historic campaign and help fund the Fight for 15! We will need real resources to organize the struggle and counter the lies and propaganda of the richest 1%. We are relying on you – workers, young people, and activists. To lay the basis for a serious campaign, we are launching an appeal for 1,000 people to donate $15/month. Sign up here to make a monthly donation or one-time donation, and add your name to the list of people supporting 15 Now
Please join us for a rally for $15 on Sunday, January 12th at 2 pm at the Seattle Labor Temple downtown!
Many of them are pretty smart on non-economic issues.
I know that not all socialists are idiots. But, they try hard to make me think otherwise..
Also housing demolition…
U-Haul and moving trucks will be a very lucrative business in Seattle in the near future.
More unemployed people is good for socialist parties. They do best when times are worst.
Because they will then continue to work just as hard to make more. Or because they contribute nothing to the productivity of enterprises.
Why?
Brilliant thinking. Make it $1 million per hour, prohibit business from firing or refusing to hire people or raising prices. All our economic problems will be solved.
Well it is in fact the greedy capitalists’ fault. However, much as I would love to have 99% of the rich people’s money stolen from them, it is impractical, as we are sadly not in a true democracy. Much as I hate to admit it, the conservative/libertarian economic arguments about increasing the minimum wage do have merit. There needs to be some minimum wage, but when it is increased radically, the only way it can work is to prohibit business from closing for a couple years until they get used to it.
I doubt the socialists are worried much about fast food restaurants replacing employees with machines, they’ll just blame the “greedy capitalists” who would rather spend money on machines than pay a “living wage”. And some gullible people will believe it.
$1 million an hour or bust!
Buncha wimps! Minimum wage should be at least $50 per hour (roughly $100,000 per year).
Then poverty would be abolished. [But I don’t want to hear from ideologues who say it should be $100 per hour. That would give the common folk luxuries and tend to lessen their desire to work hard for the good of everyone.]
I prefer fine dining, but fast food restaurants are often useful for their restroom facilities when I am out and about so I don’t want to see them close, even though I pretty much do not eat at them.
Bring $15 per hour to fast food! I want to see the looks on the faces of people when the restaurants close, implement touch screen ordering or require a college degree to work in fast food.
http://politicsisfunandgames.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-case-against-minimum-wage-part-one.html
Sorry, in the last sentence, above, I meant to type 2014, NOT 2004
This is a perfect example of how socialism actually harms working class people.
The current minimum wage in Washington state is $9.30/hour (incidentally, already the highest in the nation). The proposed NEW minimum wage of $15.00/hour represents an raise of 162%.
Clearly the resultant cost of living increase will be negligible for those who currently are making less than (+/-) $13.50/hr, BUT those who are presently earning more than $13.50/hr will notice
a marked DECREASE in their relative living standard.
And consider the reaction of those ALREADY earning $15.00-17.50/hr. They have been on the job for maybe 4,5,6 or more years and EARNED wage increases to this level. SUDDENLY, the guy the company just hired and is still learning his job is, “making as much as I do”.
NOW, the guy presently earning $15.00 to $20.00 and hours will obviously believe HE is now
entitled $20.00 to $30.00/hr. And so on and so on ad infinitum.
NOW consider the LOSS of jobs as a result of this ill advised huge increase in minimum wages.
As the article above mentions, voters in SeaTac, a small city outside Seattle, recently passed a ballot initiative for $15. The author is either ignorant of or deliberately ignoring the results of
that increase in minimum wages. Ignoring, for the moment that a Judge just ruled that this $15/hr does not apply to 4700 workers at Seattle/Tacoma Airport; several hotels announced their intention to close the restaurants at their hotels, which will cost the community at least 200 jobs.
Further, one company who already owns the land and was preparing to start construction on a new hotel later in 2004, has scrubbed the idea, citing the $15.00 for manual labor as cause.